


A Bright Dividing Line

by AstroGirl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Life Changes, M/M, post-notpocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29865999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: It can be difficult to leave the past behind, even when you want to.  But if you're lucky, all you may need is to find one clear, satisfying difference to mark the boundary between the life you've left and the future you're choosing.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66
Collections: Trope Bingo: Round Sixteen





	A Bright Dividing Line

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trope Bingo, for the prompt "team spirit."

It's one of those evenings where they've had just enough to drink that the conversation seems to take on a life of its own, words spilling out between them without bothering to check in with their conscious minds first, and Aziraphale would like to think that's why he phrases it the way he does. 

He'd like to, but he knows better.

Crowley, from his position beside him on the bookshop sofa, has been recounting a lively, amusing story about a particularly devilish thwarting of what Aziraphale thought, even at the time, was one of Heaven's stupider ideas. Aziraphale has heard it before; he's heard all of Crowley's best stories before, even if you don't count the ones in which he was a participant. But it's been two or three hundred years, long enough to have forgotten the details of this one, and he's enjoyed it thoroughly. Admired it, even. He's always appreciated Crowley's wiles, even when they were directed against him.

What he says when Crowley finishes is, "My side would be so displeased if they ever found out about that!" He laughs as he says it, half wishing Heaven _had_ found out, that he could have seen Gabriel's face as he realized how thoroughly Hell's best agent had outsmarted them, even if Aziraphale himself would undoubtedly have been blamed for not stopping it.

But Crowley doesn't laugh, and Aziraphale knows him well enough to know what it means when his smile stills like that, even for a moment. And as quickly as it happens, he realizes why.

"Oh, bugger," he says. "I've done it again, haven't I?"

"'s all right, angel." But he knows Crowley well enough, too, to know when he's only trying to be kind. Which possibly only makes it worse.

"It's been two years. You'd think I would have got out of the habit by now."

Crowley lets out a scoffing sound and twitches the fingers of the hand not holding his wineglass, as if to brush away this assertion. "A couple of years is nothing. Not when you've been saying it for six thousand."

"Still. I don't like it, that I keep saying that. 'My side.' I _do_ believe in our side, Crowley." 

He's about to say something else, although he's not precisely certain what, but Crowley interrupts him, scrunching his face up and making another dismissive noise. "Ehhh, it's fine. I get it. I know how long it takes you to get out of old habits. I mean, just look at this place." He gestures around the room with his wineglass, coming very close to sloshing a rather rare vintage onto Aziraphale's carpet.

Aziraphale knows he's expected to rise to this bait, to start a friendly argument about when he's finally going to replace his gramophone with an I Pod, or whatever it is the humans are using these days, but he finds himself unable to let the matter go, not yet. "I don't think it _is_ just a habit of speech," he says quietly. Does it feel good to confess this to Crowley? Or terrible? He honestly cannot tell. "I think, well. I think some part of me still can't quite believe it. That I'm not on Heaven's side any longer. I keep finding myself wondering when their next set of instructions for me will come through. Or thinking, 'Oh, I should put that in my next progress report.' Silly of me, I know." He picks up his own wineglass, drains it, sits it back down.

The look Crowley is giving him, he realizes with relief, isn't judgmental, or annoyed, or hurt. His expression is quite soft, really. But his voice is casual and easy. "We should do something,'" he says. "Convince that part of you things have changed, remind it what team it's on now. Like, I dunno... retirement party?"

Aziraphale winces. "Please, don't call it a 'team.'"

Crowley blinks, in that slow, deliberate, oddly compelling way of his. He sets his glass down next to Aziraphale's. "Why not?" he says, sounding genuinely interested in the answer.

"Gabriel used to be _entirely_ too fond of that particular word. I swear, the more he wanted to convince us all he was the only one whose opinion on anything counted, the more he would use it. Multiple times per sentence, when he really wanted to rub it in. And if anyone objected, he'd say, 'Now, remember, there's no I in team.'" Crowley makes a disgusted noise, which captures Aziraphale's feelings on the matter extremely well. "No I in team!" Aziraphale repeats. "It's not even true in many languages."

"Wanker," says Crowley.

"Indeed," says Aziraphale. "A _complete_ wanker." Lord, it feels good to be able to say things like that. One would think that that alone would be enough to keep him from thinking of Gabriel and his precious _team_ as "my side" ever again. 

One would think.

"Well," says Crowley, leaning back and throwing an arm across the back of the sofa without taking his eyes from Aziraphale's face, "fuck that, there can be Is in _our_ team. Have to be, even. There's an I in Aziraphale--"

"That depends on which writing system one is using," says Aziraphale, but he's smiling almost despite himself.

Crowley does not acknowledge this point. "There's an I in your name," he repeats, "and _you're_ on our team. So, you know." He waves a hand in front of him and grins. "Q.E.D."

That makes Aziraphale smile, too. And yet, he still can't seem to stop thinking about Gabriel. Which, of course, might be precisely the problem. "He got that from some dreadful American business book," he says, letting every bit of contempt he feels express itself in his voice, "or, or... self-help seminar, or some such thing. And that was hardly the worst of it."

Crowley lets out a snorting laugh. "That's hilarious."

"Not the word I would have used for it."

"Oh, trust me, it is. Who do you think _invented_ those things, angel?"

"Really? You?"

Crowley grins.

"Foul fiend," Aziraphale says, with equal parts disgust and fondness. "He... he made us do _trust falls_. Trust falls, Crowley! _Angels_."

Crowley stares at him incredulously for a moment. "Now, that," he says, "is in extremely poor taste."

For a moment they simply look at each other. Then Crowley begins to laugh, as if this absurdity is the most hilarious thing he's heard since his own unintercepted plummet from Heaven.

"Stop," Aziraphale says. "It isn't funny!" Except it is. It is now. And Crowley's laughter is infectious. In a moment he finds himself giving into it, letting the ridiculousness it of wash over him. Laughter bubbles out of him, rising up in in great, heaving, mirthful sobs, until he finds himself half doubled over, his face pressed against Crowley's arm where it sprawls across the back of his sofa.

Aziraphale laughs until his chest hurts, laughs until he can't help clutching at Crowley, until he feels Crowley clutching back at him. Until they've both laughed themselves out, exhausted themselves with it, and slowly heave themselves into silence, blinking tears of hilarity from their eyes, their hands still bunched up in each other's clothing.

Until Aziraphale raises his head, and looks into Crowley's eyes.

The demon's smile doesn't change. But that softness is back in his eyes again, a softness that should feel wrong and strange in a serpent's slitted gaze, but somehow never does. Aziraphale can feel an answering softness swelling inside him, replacing the cathartic relief of laughter with a slow, melting warmth.

Crowley doesn't let go of him. "Seriously, angel," he says, and compared to the unrestrained laughter of a moment ago, his voice seems terribly low and intimate now. "What can we do? To make you believe it? No trust falls, no wanky corporate BS. Something real."

It's almost funny, isn't it, how obvious the answer is after all this time. And it is to Crowley, as well. He can tell by the way Crowley's hands have begun gripping him tighter, by the way he's swaying forward, by the hesitant, hopeful, vulnerable look in his eyes. 

Obvious. And permissible. Because _they are on their own side_. 

Aziraphale leans in. Crowley does, too. As naturally as if they've been doing it for six thousand years and as unexpectedly as if they are the first beings to invent the concept, they are kissing.

And _this_... This is it, isn't it? The answer. This is what they are. Not a team, but a partnership. A pair. An I and an I reaching out for each other to make a We. Their future is in this touch, this connection. This promise. They are something that Gabriel, poor pathetic thing that he is, could never understand, not if you left him on Earth for six thousand years.

Aziraphale almost feels sorry for him. And then he feels nothing about him at all. He has much better, much more important things to pay attention to.

As they slowly slide their mouths apart, as Crowley raises one gentle hand up to stroke Aziraphale's hair and looks at him with an expression of astonished joy in his wide golden eyes, Aziraphale finally feels something inside him relaxing. Something letting go. 

"Yes," he says, "Yes, I believe that that will do."

Foolish of him, really, not to have consulted the desires of his Earthly body on this subject sooner. It seems there is far more wisdom and good sense there than he has ever found in the directives of Heaven. And now it is telling him to kiss his partner again. It is telling him never to stop. What could any reasonable angel do but listen?

Crowley isn't wrong. He always has been slow to change. Be he _does_ get there in the end. And when he does, there has always been someone waiting there to catch him.

That, at least, he knows will never change.


End file.
